Chapter 8

FAST STUFF

THE CLOCK on the front of the main hangar was big enough that it could be seen from all parts of the flying field, but it was dusk now, and one had to be quite close to make out that the clock hands stood at eight.

Monk got out of Doc’s streamlined car, saying in his small voice, “One thing is sure, and that is we haven’t seen all the guys in this Fountain of Youth gang. So we gotta be careful.” He jerked a thumb to take in the airport in general. “Some of them mugs might be around here anywhere, waitin’ for Kel Avery’s plane.”

Somewhat of a crowd was about the airport waiting room with its long telescoping canopy that could be hauled out to planes on little wheels. The throng had a heterogeneous appearance. Some persons carried small books and others had cameras.

“Autograph hounds and photographers,” rumbled big-fisted Renny.

“Which means a celebrity is arriving, doesn’t it?” Patricia put in.

Doc said, “Pat!”

“Yes?”

“Can you change your appearance in a hurry?”

“If I had some dark glasses, I could. You can’t imagine what a difference dark glasses make in a girl’s looks.”

Doc Savage dropped a hand into a door pocket and brought out a small leather case.

“Here they are. I do not think that Fountain of Youth crew got a good look at you this afternoon, and if you alter your appearance slightly, they might not recognize you.”

“The idea is that nobody is to think I’m with you?” Pat queried.

“Exactly.”

“All right.” Pat tapped Ham on the arm. “Lend me that snappy topcoat you’re wearing.”

“Hula?” Ham was startled.

“It’s cut like a ladies’ garment. Come on, shed it!”

The homely Monk exploded stifled laughter and Ham, ears getting red, slid out of his snappily tailored topcoat and passed it to the bronze-haired young woman.

“Keep your eyes open and be ready to grab any loose ends that we let slip, Pat,” Doc directed.

“I will.” Pat faded into the gloom among the other parked cars.

A few moments later, when they saw her again, she had donned the smoked spectacles, changed her hair, and had draped the topcoat over her shoulders.

“Smart kid!” Renny rumbled softly. “I’d hardly know her myself.”

Monk, gurgling mirth, moaned ecstatically, “I always did know something was wrong with that topcoat, and now I see what it is. The thing was made for a woman.”

Ham glared in the murk, fumbled his sword cane and snarled, “For two cents I’d make hash out of you!”

Doc put in, “Listen!”

Out of the southern twilight was coming the multiple drone of airplane engines.

“That’ll be the ship carrying Kel Avery,” decided the bronze man. “Let’s go.”

They got out of the streamlined car, six men so unusual as to attract more than one curious stare.

Doc kept in the background; he seldom wore a hat, but he wore one now, yanked low to help the murk hide his features. He did not want to attract the cameras or the autograph hunters.

Long Tom, so pale as to seem an ill man, stopped an airport attendant, asking, “Why the excitement?”

“Maureen Darleen, the movie actress, is coming in on this plane from Florida,” the attendant replied.

WHILE THE big passenger plane moaned closer, Long Tom sauntered over to Doc and spoke in a low voice.

“The photographers and autograph grabbers are here to meet Maureen Darleen, the picture queen,” he imparted.

“But if I remember my movies, this Darleen is not such a big shot. The best she’s done is play opposite a well known actor or two. And that makes me wonder why all the fuss?”

“Haven’t you read your papers lately?” Doc asked.

“Naw,” Long Tom shrugged. “I been busy working on my electrical invention to utilize sonic waves to kill insects and crop pests.”

“The papers yesterday and this morning were full of Maureen Darleen,” Doc explained. “She was kidnaped in Florida yesterday, but escaped. Some of the newspapers hinted unkindly that it was a publicity stunt.”

“Probably was,” Long Tom grunted skeptically. “These movie people will do anything for publicity.”

“They have to. If the public does not know their names; they have no box office pull, and big box office pull means big salary.”

“You seem to be sticking up for this Maureen Darleen.”

“I do not know her personally,” Doc replied. “But I do know that she spends most of her salary to support a home for orphans in her home town down in Georgia.”

“That may be a publicity stunt, too.”

“She does not advertise her connection with the home. Anyway, there are less expensive methods of grabbing publicity.”

Long Tom patted his armpit where reposed a supermachine pistol.

“Some of these cameramen and autograph hunters may belong to the Fountain of Youth gang,” he grunted.

Doc nodded. “I was thinking of that.”

The big plane circled the field once, the motors decreased their clamor and the ship swung in, sinking. The pilot was good and touched his ponderous charge to the tarmac without a bounce; then, with whooping gusts from the propellers, drove the craft toward the canopy.

Field attendants yelled and grunted and shoved to keep the crowd out of range of the propellers, and other flunkies ran the telescoping awning out.

The plane engines stopped and the cabin door opened. The throng burst bounds and rushed for the door, cameramen yelling and jumping up in an endeavor to get pictures, the autograph fans shouting for Maureen Darleen’s signature.

Doc Savage and his five men kept in a group, although they were jostled about. They lost sight of Patricia in her disguise of dark glasses and borrowed topcoat, as she was submerged in the excited movie fans.

Suddenly a voice yelled from the edge of the melee. It was a shrill voice, very loud, and the words were plainly distinguishable as they knifed through the bedlam.

“Here is Kel Avery!” it cried.

Instantly after that, a man shrieked. Blows smacked. Men cursed.

“Help! Help!” bawled a voice.

Doc Savage pitched in the direction of the cries. His great frame went through the crowd like a torpedo through water. At his beck, his five men were a flying wedge.

“Help!” bawled the voice. “Leggo me!”

Doc sighted the fight. Several hard-faced, roughly clad men had seized a fat, stocky fellow and were hauling at him, beating and kicking.

“Stop that!” Doc rapped.

“Who the hell are you?” snarled a man, and swung with a clubbed revolver.

Doc was not where he had been when the blow descended, but a yard to one side. His fist lathed out; there was a wet smack. The man with the revolver threw lip his arms and floundered hack, his lips a pulp and his teeth showing through splits where Doc’s metallic knuckles had landed.

The others ran with the fat man. They did not get far. Doc was upon them, his five men close behind. They struck, grabbed, twisted.

Johnny, who looked so incredibly gaunt, grabbed a thug twice his own weight, enwrapping the fellow spider fashion. The victim shrieked terribly, proving that Johnny had a fighting ability that belied his professional appearance.

The brawl attracted a crowd. A newspaper photographer began to jump about in his excitement and fumble his flashlight apparatus.

“It’s Doc Savage in action!” he howled. “T’hell with the movie dame! Get this!”

His flashlight gun made a whoosh!” and an eye-hurting splash of white light. Other cameramen joined the outskirts of the fray and their flashes winked blindingly.

A man wearing an aviator’s helmet ran into the scrap, fists swinging, and was promptly knocked senseless, falling at the feet of a woman who began screaming hysterically.

Long Tom bored into the middle of a large man with a gun; his fists made a rapid drum roll, and the man collapsed, gurgling. Running for another foe, the electrical wizard went out of his way to bump a camera from a photographer’s hands and step on it, ruining the exposed plates. Long Tom knew Doc’s dislike for newspaper publicity, and the camera belonged to the newspaper which the photographer worked for, anyway.

Quite suddenly, the fight was over. Of the gang who had tried to seize the fat man, all were helpless, sprawled on the ground. There were exactly seven of them, and all had the earmarks of small-time criminals.

Doc helped the fat victim to his feet. “You’re not hurt, Avery?”

“My name is not Avery!” shrieked the fat man. “I’m Joe Smith and I’m a reporter on the Morning Comet!”

Doc beckoned other newspaper men to come close. “This man says he’s Joe Smith

“Sure, he’s Joe Smith of the Morning Comet,” said a journalist. “We all know him!”

Doc Savage’s strange flake-gold eyes roved from Joe Smith to the overpowered assailants, and the bronze man’s features were strangely fixed, more metallic than ever.

There sounded unexpectedly a weird, low, mellow trilling note, a fantastic sound which seemed to come from everywhere and yet from no definite source, and which ran up and down the musical scale, definitely rhythmatic, yet adhering to no specific tune. Even those bystanders who heard the exotic trilling and looked at the bronze man’s lips, could not tell from whence it came. Yet Doc Savage authored the sound.

The trilling was a small, unconscious thing which Doc Savage did when under sudden stress, or when greatly surprised. Even he could not tell exactly how he made it, but the sound always had great significance. Just now it meant that he was shocked and utterly disgusted with himself.

At Doc’s signal, the men who had attacked the reporter were hauled into the nearest hangar and the doors closed. The thugs were scared and bewildered and entirely willing to talk, hoping it would prevent them being charged with a worse crime than assault.

“A guy named Santini hired us to jump this bird Kel Avery when the plane came in, and beat him up,” one of the men moaned. “Santini pointed out Kel Avery to us. We got fifty bucks apiece.”

“It was Joe Smith, a reporter, you attacked and not Kel Avery,” Doc said grimly.

“Santini said that guy was named Kel Avery, and for us to yell out his name,” insisted the frightened yegg.

DOC SAVAGE turned the gang over to the airport officials and went outside to join his aides.

“We fell for a trick,” he said grimly. “Santini hired these cheap crooks to attack a man in the crowd and get our attention.”

“But why get our attention?” Ham demanded, puzzled.

Big-fisted Renny came up with the answer to that. The engineer was excited.

“Doc! Doc!” he ejaculated. “During the fight, another gang grabbed this Maureen Darleen and another woman and carried them off in a car, according to people I’ve talked to in the crowd. They slugged a bodyguard this Maureen Darleen had along.”

A moment of silence followed the news and Doc Savage’s strange trilling sound seemed to echo, but it was very low and hardly perceptible to the ear.

“What beautiful dopes we turned out to be,” Ham muttered. “That other fight was to get our attention while this gang grabbed Maureen Darleen.”

“But I thought it was somebody named Kel Avery that they were after!” Renny rumbled.

“Where is this bodyguard of Maureen Darleen’s?” Doc demanded.

“Over here.” Renny led the way.

The bodyguard looked the part. He was an athletic giant almost as impressive in physique as Doc Savage. The fellow’s great muscles were more bulging even than Doc’s, which meant he was a trifle muscle-bound. He had a square head, a corded neck and square, powerful fingers. Slung across his chest, in plain sight, was a harness for carrying two pistols in underarm holsters.

The man was sitting up, shaking his head slowly, when Doc approached him. He peered at the bronze man a bit vacantly, then felt of the holsters attached to his harness. They were empty.

Doc knelt, grasped the fellow’s shoulders and shook him. “Are you Kel Avery?”

The overmuscled one shook his head from side to side. “Meester, my name, she is no Kel Avery. My name is Da Clima, yes.”

His English was understandable enough, but the words were put together in the manner of one who had learned the tongue in later life. Such accent as he had was that of southern Europe.

“You are Maureen Darleen’s bodyguard?” Doc questioned.

“Her guard, yes. Maybe was her guard.” Da Clima sighed. “She, maybe it is, won’t want a guard who as a guard is not so hot, no?”

“Do you know a Kel Avery?” Doc asked.

Da Clima squinted. Muscles as large as muskmelons bulged up under his coat as he lifted himself.

“Kel Avery is Maureen Darleen,” he said. “You not know that, no?”

“Maureen Darleen and Kel Avery the same person?” Doc repeated, as if to make sure.

Da Clima nodded. “Kel Avery, or Kelmina Avery, she don’t use that name, not so much. The name Avery, she not so good on the movie picture, no. Maureen Darleen much better, so the girl she use the name of Avery not so,, much.”

“A lot of these movie actresses have stage names, Renny rumbled.

Monk came up, short legs taking great leaps.

“Pat ain’t around here anywhere!” he snapped.

Doc gripped Renny’s thick arm. “You said that gang made off with two women, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go!”